The High(est) Ground…

As we scrawl scintillating series, we might send carefully-lined birthday greetings to Herman Melville; he was born on this date in 1819. The author of Moby Dick (along with other novels, short stores, and essays) was a fan of an altogether different kind of listing:

I am sick of these terra firma toils and cares; sick of the dust and reek of towns. Let me hear the clatter of hailstones on icebergs, and not the dull tramp of these plodders, plodding their dull way from their cradles to their graves. Let me snuff thee up, sea-breeze! and whinny in thy spray. Forbid it, sea-gods! intercede for me with Neptune, O sweet Amphitrite, that no dull clod may fall on my coffin! Be mine the tomb that swallowed up Pharaoh and all his hosts; let me lie down with Drake, where he sleeps in the sea.